Skyrim Roleplay Series 2 Discussion, Suggestions and Ideas

This thread is for all the questions, ideas, suggestions and feedback you might have for the series.

Before the first video went out, I had already put a lot of thought to the backstory and as the story goes on, I'm able to flesh out Ulik even more. You can find an introduction to Ulik here http://goo.gl/l3Gd0F and on this post too.

The list of mods is further down on this post. (NOTE: I started this series back in 2013 and have kept the same mods and mod versions throughout the series. Thus, I do not recommend using all the mods I'm using anymore, but S.T.E.P. is still an awesome starting point - and might be all you really need.)

Ulik Enakis is a Dunmer miner, who's life takes a drastic turn in the cold, harsh land of Skyrim. Ulik is the main protagonist in Skyrim Roleplay Series 2 by Zemalf. Ulik has a wife, Liliah, and two children, Sherelle and Ulpar.

Ulik and his family live in Helgen, although Ulik is there only once and a while as he earns gold working at the various mines around Skyrim. Ulik has been in Skyrim for about 30 years. Before that he worked at the Ebony Mine in Raven Rock, Solstheim. When the mining at Raven Rock slowed down, Ulik and his newly wed wife moved to Skyrim where they found their home in Helgen.

Ulik has never been a religious man, but he, like most Dunmers, followed the ways of the New Temple in his time in Morrowind, the streets of Blacklight where he was born, and in Solstheim too. The years in Skyrim have diluted him from Azura, Mephala and Boethiah, and he has found himself praying on same gods as his fellow Nord miners.

Ulik loves his wife and his family, he's loyal to those who earn his trust, but there are not many who have. He doesn't shy away from lying, stealing and cheating if needed and it has gotten him into trouble more than once. He's had his share of drunken brawls with other miners and patron's of the local inns, and not all without casulties.

One man thought he'd better kill Ulik than to have another game of chance with him. The man thought Ulik would be an easy target, with his blind eye on the left, but he didn't know that Ulik could see very well with the eye and when the man realized that, he already had a dagger in his back.

For the last several months, Ulik has been mining at the Left Hand Mine in Markarth, making coin for himself and his family. On his way back to his family, taking a ride from a Khajiit caravan driver he met at an inn, he got ambushed by a group of bandits and was left for dead. And this is where our story begins...

The beginning of the series was heavily postponed due time constraints and sickness, but Skyrim Roleplay Series 2 finally premiered on August 2013.

1. GENERAL

Before I started recording, I knew:

I'd play the Main Quest (MQ) and the Dragonborn DLC. (Not saying I'll "rush" through the MQ and the DLC, but the "story of the dragonborn" is the main goal of the LP)

I'd play either Dark Elf, Khajiit or ArgonianDark Elf

My character will be "average" and quite ordinary to begin with, e.g. doesn't necessary even know how to use a sword or bow

I wouldn't restrict to any "class", but if anything, kind of combination of Nightblade, Archer, Assassin and Thief.

I'd go for a sneaky, archer character (but I'll use all skills this time, and not restrict myself too much)

I'd want to experiment playing a character with lower morale, less of a goody two-shoes like Yngvarr in Series 1 and Albert in Fallout 3 have been.

That the Series 2 would not *not* dead is dead (aka not ironman/permadeath)

I'd be using quite many A LOT of mods, see below.

When I was set to start, I created the character, created the background story for him, thought about the generic storyline (my own + game storylines) he'd follow through, etc.

2. MODS

I'm using over 300 mods, texture packs and utilities. I'm listing most mods here and least the most important ones.

If you have a mod in mind that might fit nicely into my LP, feel free to post/suggest it on this thread. I can't, and won't promise I use the suggested mod, but I'm since there's so many mods around, I'm interested in hearing about them in case I've missed some good/interesting ones. (EDIT: Now that I've worked on my mod setup for a while and for this series, I don't change the setup anymore - feel free to talk about and suggest mods though)

NOTE: I started this series back in 2013 and have kept the same mods and mod versions throughout the series. Thus, I do not recommend using all the mods I'm using, but S.T.E.P. is still an awesome starting point - and might be all you really need.

MOD FOREWORD

DO NOT INSTALL EVERYTHING I HAVE. Only install the ones you really need and use. You can add mods later, if really needed, but uninstalling mods from on-going game can potentially break your game. If you're testing out mods, do it with a character you're willing to let go - or keep track what mods were used in a base-save you can revert back to.

Do NOT uninstall mods from on-going game

Consider mod updates very carefully (because you are removing/uninstalling the old version)

Adding = OK, Removing = New game

I recommend using my mod list for inspiration, rather than using it all. If you're new to Skyrim modding, don't even think installing all these mods or even close to it. Textures and visuals are OK, but adding just a couple of mods that change the game and you start running into conflicts if you're not careful. If you know what you're doing, pick mods from the list you like if you haven't used them and try them out - if you like them, keep them.

If you decide to add as many mods as I have, a word of warning: I used hours on creating custom patch-files that work specifically for this combination of mods and ensure they all work together and the mods don't end up overwriting each other the wrong way. I had to restart the game many times in a new game, because the game was too unstable with too many mods in.

S.T.E.P. (S.T.E.P. version 2.2.6): Huge collection of mods aimed to enhance the visuals (e.g. HD textures) and tweak the gameplay to fix/improve things while staying true to the TES/Skyrim lore and the original game.

Selection of over 200 mods, mostly visuals and small, but important tweaks

In addition to visuals, I'll be running some mods that "gamify" some roleplay elements, e.g. freezing temperatures, eating and drinking, etc. If these mods become more of a burden, I'll uninstall them and just roleplay without the mod/game forcing it to me. I'll also use some mods to make some aspects of the game more hard (in hopes of making them more enjoyable to me).

All compatibility patches for the (massive) combination of mods
+ manually created my own to combine the various patches and add my own fixes and tweaks.

SHORTLIST (NOT IN USE, BUT MIGHT USE IF APPLICABLE)

Mapseller 2.0.1
Your Market Stall v1.4.1 (Ddidn't want to run a mod with scripts if I'm not sure that I use it)
Touring Carriages http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/38529
Immersive Patrols v1.6 (Had the Travelers in, but it seemed to overload the roads)

MODS IN TESTING (IN USE AT THE MOMENT, KEPT IF WORKS WELL)

Bards Play Less - Instrumental http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/29968 (Using the "intrumental" option = Bards only play instrumental music, other songs only on request. There's also "only request" and normal option. Bards are awesome, I love the inns in the game, but after you hear Ragnar the Red for the 32nd time, it loses the appeal. + for a let's play, the songs are somewhat interruptive to commentary)

Steve40's script bug fixes. Don't use these unless you're game is crashing a lot and/or you're getting errors from these scripts in your Papyrus logs. If you don't know what a Papyrus log is, you don't need these

Civil War Overhaul 1.1 (The mod is little buggy, and since civil war is not in the focus on Series 2, I decided to drop it. Plus, there might be v2 of the mod in the future, fixing the minor issues it has now, providing even better experience)

3DNPC - Interesting NPCs 2.43.3BETA (Another fantastic mod that I had to drop because there were too many conflicts with the other mods I'm running - that would require TES5EDIT patch. Newer version, especially when the "non-beta" v3 is out, check this mod out, there's huge amount of concent, NPCs, dialogue, quests, companions that have something to say, etc.)

ASIS (wasn't quite sure how well it would work together with DUEL and Immersive Creatures/SkyTEST, so dropped it)

Fishing in Skyrim 1.00 - Since I'm not sure if I actually want to fish, I dropped this (Having a mod that runs scripts when you don't really need it is unnecessary stability risk).

Another Sorting 1.48 (So much patch work with all the mods adding and editing items that I just gave up)

Localized Guild Jobs 3.00 (Seemed to have so many conflicts with other mods I use that I dropped this)

Economics of Skyrim (more "hardcore" and realistic economy, but opted for just Trade & Barter)

SkyTEST - Realistic Animals and Predators v1.37 http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/10175/ (Yet another "I just have too many mods" removal. Too often the AI was overloaded, because of all the other mods, so I dropped this. If you want to run this, run it without too many other mods - or mods that change little things)

Populated Cities 2.0. I really wanted this in, to give more life to the cities, but for stability I decided to drop it. (already running inconsequential NPCs anyway)

Detailed Cities 0.20. Makes cities look awesome and detailed, but with the settings and mods I'm running (e.g. trees), it pushed my FPS in Whiterun from X to 30 (while recording 26-30 vs 55-60 where it stays elsewhere) and pushed my VRAM to the edge (1.5GB), so I dropped it.

Corners of Skyrim 1.2 - Nice mod, and one location was even on video (the Ghostrise Hearth, little hut, near Falkreath). But dropped to reduce the number of mods.

IF I'D CHOSEN TO PLAY KHAJIIT

Khajiit Speak (if I ever play a Khajiit, this will go in; completely overhauls dialogue to be "Khajiit-like")

ZEMALF'S FIXES AND PATCHES

Cleaned Vanilla and DLC ESMs with TES5EDIT
Cleaned various mod ESPs with TES5EDIT
Fixed various mod ESPs to pass on the changes in the DLCs
Fixed various mod ESPs to include the changes from the Unofficial Patches

Open TES5Edit.
Select all the Bethesda ESMs then click [OK].
Expand "Worldspace" under Dragonborn.esm and select the "0000003C" node.
Right-click the column for Dragonborn.esm and select "Copy as override into...".
Select "<new file>" and click [OK]. In the resulting text box type "General Patch".
Expand "Worldspace">"0000003C" and select the "00000D74" node.
Right-click the column for Dawnguard.esm and select "Copy as override into...".
Select General Patch.esp and click [OK].
Click the [X] in the upper right hand corner, uncheck "Backup plugins", and click [OK].

Straight out of BOSS. (with mods/files not in the BOSS masterlist injected with similar mods)

CHANGES DURING THE SERIES 2

If you're using this list as a guide, note that this section shouldn't exist

Changing and updating texture (replacer) mods is always fine (if, and only if they have only textures), but...

Installing new mods to an existing game is OK, but uninstalling mod can lead to problems if you don't start a new game! Choose your mods carefully, you can always include more, but removing can break your (save) game, which you probably don't want after playing for tens or hundreds of hours. Be especially careful with mods that have scripts.

I uninstalled/changed/upgraded the following, which lead to the (just to be safe) restart between the parts 10 and 11.

Upgraded to the last unofficial patches

I started the series with Pure Waters, but chose W.A.T.E.R. 1.75b over it due regular updates (= fixes), support from other mods, and the built-in Realistic Needs and Diseases support (for the "drink from stream") without extra .ESP-file.

The main purpose of this thread is to have a place where I can put the information about the LP in one place in its "planning stage".

And to have a place where you can post feedback, ideas or suggestions for about the character, the LP in general, etc.

So... over to you

p.s. You can still suggest and talk about mods, but I'm very unlikely to change my setup too much while playing. The fact is, uninstalling and installing mods mid-game easily leads to problems, so I'd like to avoid that.

I enjoy all of your videos so much, and like different things about all of them. However, your last Skyrim Let's Play was probably the best roleplay of any game by anyone that I have ever seen, including myself. So, though I would never normally try to tell you what to do (:P) I will say a couple of things, since you asked.

* Firstly, I support the idea of the Dark Elf, over the Khajiit or Argonian, because even though the Dark Elves have been pretty well covered I think that playing as such an alien species as the other two can be too much of a culture shock for a roleplay... I also feel they're slightly silly - my problem I suppose. (A lizard and a cat...)

* Secondly, I like the idea of a stealthy archer type, maybe developing out of being a hunter/trapper. I think that would suit your play style, and might make for a more interesting Dragonborn than some Nordic thug.

* Thirdly, on the subject of personality, although I know this might be a stretch, as you seem like such a nice guy, it might be interesting if the new character is not that nice. I don't mean pantomime evil (still on the right side, just) but less moral. Maybe selfish and spiteful, cowardly and proud? Ok with stealing and murder and lying?

And, uh, yeah, that's it. I'll be excited to watch it whatever it is - I pretty much watch every video you upload in the first few hours anyway! (Even if it is bad for my studies...)

Some pretty tough choices here, but I would definitely enjoy seeing a stealth oriented character, but first of all, my thoughts on the possible races, all of which are Outcasts for this setting, either from their own nature or due to the historical relations with the Nords.

1. Argonian - this seems to be the race which makes the least sense to be played in Skyrim's settting, due to the climate and their biological nature. If anyone remembers, Argonians are useless in the ashlands of Morrowind (so says a Nine-Toes the Blades Trainer in Balmora), so one can only imagine what it must be like in the snowy peaks of Skyrim. This aside, they have the least understood culture of all the other races and would be very difficult to role-play properly. It's also quite hard for me to imagine why an Argonian would travel all the way to the frozen north - unless he is a bounty-hunter similar to Angel Eyes in his determination.

2. Khajiit - one of my favourites, for the voice (syntax included), concept and - well, at least in a properly moded game, - great focus on speed and stealth. This would probably be best played as a very individual-minded character, who has great confidence in his abilities, perhaps too much confidence. In fact, I think a Khajiit would be a born gambler, jumping in - or out - of sometimes impossible situations (note that this need not mean he won't be a methodical stealth killer if necessary), a colourful character (think bard with poisoned lute here) with a bit of a wild streak, merging spectacular(or surgigal if needed) violence, along with kindness for those who he believes truly deserve it. In my view, whereas an Argonian would need to be a fanatical seeker to reach Skyrim, a Khajiit would be a runner - from his past, from his foes, from himself. He could even start as a wandering Moonsugar/Skooma addict, who has not yet managed to get over his addiction.

3.Dunmer - This would probably be the easiest to roleplay in the sense that there is a huge amount of detail on Dunmer culture. A true Dunmer would be extremely proud and thoroughly disdainful of races who are by no means as short-lived as they are - which would cause quite some trouble in Skyrim's society. This and the historical enmity between Nords and Dunmer would ensure progress will not be too smooth. Also, one of the greatest sources of potential here would be his religious beliefs, especially if we say that he was born and raised when the Tribunal still existed (it's not THAT much of a stretch, since, for instance, the Telvani wizards lived for thousands of years and we only have a few centuries here). So he would've seen everything he ever believed in be destroyed: his gods, his family, his homeland. This makes him vengeful, bitter and...iconoclastic/atheistic, but also completely devoted to what he sees as right, nevermind the costs.

In any case, looking forward to see your choices and how the characters will grow and change.

I've been watching all your videos in the past year, and decided that it's time to put in my two cents.

After thinking about it, you should definetly play Dunmer, or Dark Elf, as they are known by the Nords. Here's why:

Dragonborn DLC is set in Solsteim, which you probably know, and is a home to Dunmer, being so close to morrowind. That would be great material roleplaying-wise.

Your character could also be mainly driven by greed and hatred towards Nords and Imperials because of the racism they practice towards all elven and non-human races. A rogue-like Soldier-of-fortune with a past as a hunter or some such. Not completely evil, mind you. Just a little bit selfish and tough attitude agaist other races but his/her own.

I also like the idea of the character being a sneaky/archery type, fit for all three classes you listed. It brings a certain suspension in the playstyle and thus in your videos, which is always a plus.

Just so you know, i will be enjoying your second Skyrim series regardless what kind of character you play. Thank you and keep making exellent videos!

Great posts and insights from all, but I gotta get my hat off for you Vandervecken - well-thought, "lore-based" thoughts there on the three outcast races. Something for me to think about

To add to my original post: I've played a good character alread in Skyrim with Yngvarr and in F3 with Albert, so I'll want to challenge myself by roleplaying something else than a good guy. How all that fits into the story of the Dragonborn, I'll have to ponder a bit.

I'd be awesome if you give a tutorial on how to install all the mods you plan on doing, so we can kinda follow along with your story!
I know you could not be fucked, sorry. But I'd really appreciate it!

Hello Zemalf, this is my first post on your forum and I'm starting with a little advices before you start recording the let's play.

About the race : My heart go for the Khajiit. This race has so much personality, this is just great for a role play, you can refer to skooma, the merchant life, emphasis the fact that you've gone to a VERY different country than your (can emphasis on the cold, language difference ect).

About the career : playing a stealth/archer is a very good choice, you can go for a pure stealth (using stealth, one handed weapon and alchemy for primary perk tree) but you can also go for some funny variations (for instance, using illusion can be really powerful and useful in addiction to your stealth abilities).

I like the idea of RPing a more selfish character, somebody who looks after his own needs first before even thinking of other people, a character who wouldn't like doing a quest out of kindness. RPing a character who knows little of combat and is thrown into a role of power would be cool too.

As for race, Khajiit would be a good starter for a thief/archer/trader, a character who would steal anything to make some quick gold. Argonian would be much of the same. Dark Elf will have the same oppressed race feel but with some more dark elf friends around skyrim.

From a lore standpoint all three races are quite fleshed out in their origin, why a Argonian would leave the black marsh for a mostly cold and frozen region full of racists and a massive lack of spears would be an interesting story. Argonians show great loyalty to friends and don't much like men and mer, mainly because of slavery and war, this could be good for RPing. Also, naming would be awesome things like "opens-many-chests"... you can also despise J'zargo as the two beast races don't like each other.
Khajiit are as good as the Argonians, maybe better, being a trader who had to leave Elsweyr because of the high elves. Here's an intresting page for lore friendly name things http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Khajiit#Names
Dark Elf will be interesting being an assassin later on would be cool maybe with some fire magic mixed in.